Our Darkest Hour.

Day 941, 17:04 • Published in USA USA • by Sossu

Day 940 events.

The massive fighting spanned on days 939-941 between Eden and Phoenix over French sovereignty and the liberation of Liaoning have ended to a total defeat of Eden. After coming under siege in France, Eden decided to go in to offensive instead of defending the Spanish colonies, ultimately sacrificing them to save damage to liberate Liaoning. The battles in Spain ended over 12 hours before the battle of Liaoning, targeted by Eden yet again, forcing Eden to refrain from fighting and watch Aquitaine and Rhone Alps fall, thus exposing their cards first.

Spain gave the ultimate sacrifice by refraining from fighting to protect their interests in order to achieve a goal that will greatly benefit the Alliance as a whole. Even when we fail, this kind of unity and commitment is a sign that Eden is still strong from the inside and capable of playing as a team instead of being just a loose league of nations. We might very well need such willingness to sacrifice some to give help to an ally, if Phoenix takes advantage of our weakened situation during the upcoming months.

The battle for Liaoning pt. 2 lost slightly in damage to the first try when USA spearheaded the attempt. Statistics show 33,970,000 inflicted damage, making Liaoning 2 the second biggest battle ever fought. Eden used 12656 Wellness Packs while Phoenix used 8440. Let’s assume that a Q5-weapon costing 0,85G was used in every WP-fight, raising the cost of tanking weaponry to 10758G for Eden and 7174 for Phoenix. The starting cost was around 2600 G, making the total cost of attacking Liaoning and tanking damage to rise over 38,600G while Phoenix spent 24,000G to successfully defend the region. The military action in France evens out the expenses, but Phoenix clearly got more with their money as they secured Liaoning and captured two important Spanish regions.

During the early minutes of the battle, Eden used the shock and awe-tactic, dropping over 2,3mil damage in a matter of minutes, leaving Serbia to deal with a severe disadvantage. Serbia however raised the wall to 2,5mil, leaving the Chinese citizen base the task to decimate the wall enough for a successful Eden tanking to occur in the end. China has risen to be a powerful nation, succeeding Croatia in population and military strength. Possessing Iron in Heilongjiang, China is the no. 1 growing power of the Allied sphere of nations. China dropped the wall to 1,6m and Eden tanks started to roll when 10 minutes were left. Eden dropped the wall briefly to Rural, but Phoenix was prepared to tank twice in a short period of time in case the battle would go in to overtime and end during day 941, giving all participants a third possibility to fight in the same battle. After 40 minutes of overtime, Phoenix steamrolled Eden forces who counted on finishing the battle during day 940. Liaoning was secured, and Eden left with empty hands.

USA, Poland and China hit hardest from the allied side, all inflicting over 2mil damage, followed closely by Romania who made 1,9mil. Serbia once again exceeded all expectations and made 7,2mil, a marvelous accomplishment. Add the damage coming from Serbians who have Bosnian citizenship and Serbia reaches 8mil mark yet again. It’s also worth noting that a new personal damage record in one battle has been set, as an American player jankems inflicted 109,093 damage. Apparently Serbia, who still struggles with a deficit from Liaoning pt. 1, got more loan money or donations, mainly from Russia who are the economic powerhouse of Phoenix. The received money made successful defending possible, and one can only wonder does the rest of Phoenix ever grow tired of paying Serbia’s wars when they still owe from the previous one?

As a decoy to draw damage from Liaoning, Croatia finally attacked Serbian original regions, a move deliberately avoided by Eden until now. This war might backfire the soonest as Serbia is extremely willing to attack and invade Croatia, but hasn’t dared to launch the full Eden-MPP-set by themselves. Now with the full backing of Phoenix, Serbia will surely start to collect money to launch an attack on Croatia, a RL-affiliated nemesis of Serbia.

All in all the power balance between alliances has… well, balanced. Eden was the leading alliance for some months, but the loss of Aquitaine and Rhone Alps greatly evens the gap between Eden and PHX. Eden is forced to go on to defensive as we have gone in to a tactical dead end. Liaoning seems unreachable and we have no good MPP-sets against any PHX-nation except Russia, who are out of question under current circumstances. Phoenix holds a general initiative, as they have MPP😒 against Sweden, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Canada, Spain and Greece. On the eve of V2, the greatest fear of ours is that Phoenix decides to wait for the launch and not play the game despite having the better strategical hand. Encourage Phoenix to play the game despite the uncertainty of the future by voting this.

In France, Hungary has negotiated a deal to rent Rhone Alps. The rent is supposedly several thousand Gold in a month, making France a serious economical player as they have Aquitaine as well in addition. Hungary is lowering their income tax of wood to meet the general taxation of Hungary and a vote to implement a hospital and DS will subsequently follow. Hungary will be strengthened by having a wood region, as wood is the second-most important resource. At the same time Liaoning is weakened however when several hundreds of Hungarians move out from there to inhabit Rhone Alps.

Today we stand defeated, but our morale or unity must not tremble. We will need each other during the next weeks and months, facing new challenges and new wars against our competitors. Let’s not turn to each other but keep our eyes on the prize and pursue together to claim it.